My Genealogy Hound

GEORGE W. ANDERSON, Jr., a native of Carroll County, Ky., was born June 19, 1849, and is the only living child born to George W. Anderson, Sr.; the latter, a native of Boone County, was born in 1808, and is a son of George and Sarah (Brooks) Anderson, natives of Maryland and North Carolina, respectively. In 1834, George W. Anderson, Sr., married Miss Catherine E. Gray, a native of Lawrenceburg, Ind., and nine children were born to them, only one of whom is living, viz.: George W. Jr., whose name heads this sketch. Mr. Anderson, Sr., is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and has been a prominent and successful business man; he retired from business in 1883, and is now residing at Carrollton. He was extensively engaged in flat boating to New Orleans, and previously kept the Anderson County Ferry, which was established by his father. He located in Carroll County in 1840, and has been engaged in mercantile business most of his life. George W. Anderson, Jr., was reared and educated in Carroll County, and at the age of fifteen accepted a clerkship with C. D. Imrey. When quite a young man he went to Martin, Tex., where he engaged in mercantile business one year, and returning to Kentucky bought and sold horses and mules, which he shipped South; he also engaged extensively in piano and insurance business, in which he was unusually successful. In 1877 he engaged in the livery business, and in 1879 and 1880 built the Carrollton and Worthville Turnpike. In 1880 he engaged in the coal and contract business, and conducted it on an extensive scale, selling about 250,000 bushels of coal a year, and employing about forty hands the whole year round. This business he carried on for five years, or until he went into steam-boating, etc. In the spring of 1880 he built sixty houses, and also built Andersonville, a suburb of Carrollton. He is now extensively engaged in steam-boating; is captain of “Blue Wing” steamer, which has plied between Louisville and Frankfort since 1885. Mr. Anderson also runs steamers “J. C. Kerr” and “J. M. Clark.” Previously he was engaged by the Government in the improvement of the Kentucky River, and built the first house in the eastern division of Carrollton, in which town he now owns about twenty-six houses. In April, 1878, Mr. Anderson married Mrs. Violette H. (Hornsby) Drake, of Louisville, Ky., a very talented and brilliant lady, a daughter of Dr. Thomas N. Hornsby, the latter a member of an old and prominent family of Shelby County, where he was born in 1813; he is a graduate of both law and medicine, and now resides at Shelbyville; his father was Thomas Hornsby, who came from Yarmouth, England, and was worth $5,000,000 when he came to this country, and first settled in Virginia, coming finally to Kentucky to protect a claim of 5,000 acres in Shelby County. The maternal grandfather of our subject immigrated to Boone County immediately after Daniel Boone; he died in 1839 at the age of seventy-four years.